Poetry: Garrison Keillor And Good Poems For America And Hard Times

Ice Festival and Winter Carnival in St. Paul Minnesota. The events are held during the end of January and first week of February every year. | Source

Famous Theaters, Famous Poems

The famous Shubert Theater Company built the Fitzgerald Theater in St, Paul, Minnesota, along with many other venues that people love unto the present age.

Educator, comedian, and author Garrison Keillor has presented his Saturday evening Prairie Home Companion radio show for over 40 years at the Fitzgerald and thousands of people have listened regularly. I'm one of them. Unfortunately, people are not yet able to love for 200 years as I would have it, so Mr. Keillor is retiring from the microphone and stage of the Fitzgerald in September 2016. I am missing Guy Noir already!

Happily for us, Keillor maintains a webpage on which he offers poetry of his own, classic poems, and new poetry written by people from all backgrounds. He has collected a few volumes of his favorites and I enjoy re-reading one of them. Below are some fragments of these uplifting poems to send you through the rest of your day in a more lighthearted manner.

This is an enjoyable film of the Keillor radio program, with Kevin Kline as Guy Noir and Meryl Streep as one of the girl singers. Woody Harrelson and Jon C. Reilly perform "Lives of the Cowboys." Many more stars add their contributions to a fine movie based on the old time radio show format.

Garrison Keillor Collects Poems

Garrison Keillor's introduction to this volume of verses could stand by itself as literature.

The introduction is a bit political in nature, but the, poets are political. They are political, because they change the world with words that spur people to action. Ice Cube called gangsta rap "news" and "art" back in the 1980s and truly, his rap verses set to music were political and artistic - artistic in the sense that they moved people to action. It was not always pleasant action, but action it was.

Poets are artists who commemorate, commiserate and celebrate. They remind us of situations that we should not forget and teach us for the first time about other circumstances that we knew nothing about. They teach us to refuse to tolerate the intolerable and to pay tribute to the unsung everyday hero.

Shubert Theaters Since the Late 1800s

The Shubert Theater Company began as one theater built and developed by the three Shubert Brothers before 1900. At the turn of the century, they began putting on NYC productions and to date, nearly two dozen Shubert Theaters operate across the country, many still alive and full of theatergoers on Broadway.

The Fitzgerald in St. Paul was originally called the Shubert and our country was home to perhaps three dozen additional Shubert theaters until the 1970s. The Shuberts included vaudeville shows for several decades as well, until the 1960s.

Humorous Poetry and Wistful Verses

Garrison Keillor's radio program includes songs, poems, and stories. Its advertisements are usually jingles about fictitious products like Powdermilk Biscuits, the biscuit that gives shy persons the gumption to get up and do what needs to be done.

Humor is interspersed with serious and provocative words and verses for good balance and it all makes people think and grow as people - laughing people in the end. A sense of humor will help you through hard times, whether it is the loss of a loved one, a divorces, political trials, a war, or a national disaster. Humor helps.

Poetry of Childhood

Childhood, we think, should be a happy time. However, sometimes it is not. Parenthood can be more disillusioned and difficult to manage, but we hope for the best.

Poetry included in Good Poetry For Hard Times includes a few for parents and their children. I think you will like them all, but part of one is included below for you.

"And we are kind to snails." | Source

A Poetry for Childhood and Parenting

Here is the first stanza to a lovely poem about mother and child:

For A Five-Year-Old by Fleur Adcock

A snail is climbing up the window-sill

into your room, after a night of rain.

You call me in to see, and I explain

that it would be unkind to leave it there:

it might crawl to the floor; we must take care

that no one squashes it. You understand,

and carry it outside, with careful hand,

to eat a daffodil.

Fleur Adcock, CNZM, OBE is a New Zealand poet and editor. Of English and Northern Irish descent, she lived much of her live in England. She is called one of the most influential poets in the UK, with "deceptively quiet poems" that move the soul and the mind. She writes much about nature and out relationships with animals, touching on details that we may not realize that we see. She published her own collection of 40 years of poetry about 2000 and a second volume called "Dragon Talk" in 2010.

Here is a collection of poetry that I enjoy over and over. Some are happy, others uplifting, and others thoughtful and mellow. They all improve one's frame of mind. These are poems that take you away from today's problems and give you mental rest so that you can return to solving them with new energy.

They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.

— Garrison Keillor in "Good Poems for Hard Times"

Excepts of Good Poems

Here is a humorous except about a difficult and ever changing language, from the poem Ode to American English by Barbara Hamby:

...but no one uses the King James anymore, only plain-speak versions,

in which Jesus, raising Lazarus from the dead, says,

"Dude, wake up," and the L-man bolts up like a B-movie

mummy, "Whoa, I was toasted."

Many people in America feel that they are victims of con artists in one scheme or another. Movies are made about con artists and perhaps give possible victims additional layers of paranoia. Here is an interesting except of a poem about con artists.

This poem is staunchly serious and brings attention to problems of race relations and justice in America, as does the docu-drama film Straight Outta Compton (2015).

The Con Job by Charles Bukowski, first stanza:

the con job

the ground war began today

at dawn

in a desert land

far from here.

the U.S. ground troops were

largely

made up of

Blacks, Mexicans and poor

whites

most of whom had joined

the military

because it was the only job

they could find.

Daily Disasters Made Tolerable

Do you ever have trouble starting your car in cold weather? This poem is for you and here is an excerpt of it:

The following verse speaks of the lunch break a busy farmer takes with his several children. As typical of most American farms, the whole family worked together, pitching hay, harvesting apples, perhaps cutting ice for sale in the winter, feeding the animals, and more. Not everything was fun, but it was always worthwhile.

My father's lunch, by Erica Funkhouser

We could see it was an old meal with the patina of dream going back to the first days of bread and meat and work.

Here is another poem of childhood trials - the children's emergency room.

Children's Hospital, Emergency Room, by Gregory Djanikian

Your child is lying on the table Restrained, You must be still The nurse who cradles her head is saying And the doctor is embroidering Delicately patiently like a kind aunt But there is not enough solace in that To make you stop thinking of other children Whose hurt blooms like a dark interior bruise

Poems at the National Book Festival

Poetry and its appreciation are a large part of the National Book Festival held at the end of summer every year in Washington DC. The video below features Garrison Keillor discussing an anthology of poems at the book festival in 2011.

Another Good Volume

This newest collection make another excellent book. It poems include those about being on the road via trains, buses, and cars; summer places, city places, and many places all over the USA. They will bring back memories and give you new ideas.

Comments

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sending

Author

Patty Inglish 2 years agofrom USA. Member of Asgardia, the first space nation, since October 2016

@teaches12345 - I am really sorry to see him retire soon. Who's going to Guy Noir now? -- That character will be no more. How grand for you to see him in person!

Dianna Mendez 2 years ago

I have several tapes of his Lake Wobegon series but I have not one of his books on poems. Thanks for highlighting his works. I find him most entertaining and was fortunate to see him in person a few years back.

Author

Patty Inglish 2 years agofrom USA. Member of Asgardia, the first space nation, since October 2016

@Shyron E Shenko -- I am very happy that you have enjoyed this poetry and the material that goes with them!

Shyron E Shenko 2 years agofrom Texas

Patty, I love this, poetry is my favorite genre. And you my dear friend made it even more special with you beautiful informative article.

Thumb-up, UABI and shared

Blessings and Hugs

Author

Patty Inglish 2 years agofrom USA. Member of Asgardia, the first space nation, since October 2016

@MsDora - I think the Adcock poem is also my favorite. i am happy you like it, too.

Dora Weithers 2 years agofrom The Caribbean

Patty, I enjoyed these tidbits by these very special poets and their outstanding work. The verse by Fleur Adcock is special, as are all the verses in different ways.

Author

Patty Inglish 2 years agofrom USA. Member of Asgardia, the first space nation, since October 2016

Thanks for reading! I really like these collections of pooms and love Prairie Home Companion.

Richard Francis Fleck 2 years agofrom Denver, Colorado

I enjoyed reading this enthusiastic piece of writing--thanks for sharing.

Author

Patty Inglish 2 years agofrom USA. Member of Asgardia, the first space nation, since October 2016

Thank you, MarleneB! Familiar with some of the authors,. I wa snot familiar with all of their work! Then I found these books. I run into information in accidental ways - flipping through radio stations, reading a variety of books and magazines that seem to cross reference themselves; all kinds of ways.

Marlene Bertrand 2 years agofrom USA

Thank you for introducing me to poems that I probably never would have read on my own. I truly enjoyed reading the background information and the poems themselves were enlightening.

Author

Patty Inglish 2 years agofrom USA. Member of Asgardia, the first space nation, since October 2016

Some of the poems in these books are extremely useful and reading them makes a worthwhile time. They are, as you say, a definite force.

Eric Dierker 2 years agofrom Spring Valley, CA. U.S.A.

Very interesting and informative about a human force we can all learn from.

Author

Patty Inglish 2 years agofrom USA. Member of Asgardia, the first space nation, since October 2016

Oh yes, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average. Beebop-A-Ree-Bop Rhubarb Pie. :)

mckbirdbks 2 years agofrom Emerald Wells, Just off the crossroads,Texas

Hello Patty. Garrison Keillor is the epitome of creative force. I was fortunate to see him some time ago when he performed near Hollywood Ca. My wife and youngest daughter quote Guy Noir often as if they were trying out for parts. His work is rich in texure and it is not surprising he made his living these many years from writing and performing. His Praire Home Companion should be used in theater classes all over the country.

How does it go? "Where all the women are beautiful and all the children are above average."

Thanks for an enjoyable read.

Author

Patty Inglish 2 years agofrom USA. Member of Asgardia, the first space nation, since October 2016

Thank you very much for posting a comment, whonunuwho. I thoroughly enjoy the anthologies mentioned and hope others do, too. :)

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